Avelo Defend Deportation Flights

Avelo Airlines, a Houston, Texas-based low-cost carrier, are facing backlash from both employees and customers over their decision to operate deportation flights under a new contract with the Trump administration. 

Avelo, which have been struggling financially, signed a contract with the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last month to transport migrants to detention centers inside and outside the US, according to an internal company memo reviewed by the Reuters news agency. 

On Monday, the airline flew their first flight under the deal from Arizona to Louisiana, data from flight-tracking services FlightAware and Flightradar24 showed. 

Avelo plan to dedicate three Boeing 737-800 planes to deportation operations and has established a charter-only base in Mesa, Arizona, specifically for these flights, according to the company memo. 

US President Donald Trump launched a hardline crackdown on undocumented immigration, including the deportation of Venezuelan migrants he accused of being gang members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Immigration authorities also detained and moved to deport some legal permanent US residents. Trump’s policies have triggered a rash of lawsuits and protests. 

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were deporting illegal aliens who broke the country’s laws. She called the protests “nothing more than a tired tactic to abolish ICE by proxy”. 

The airline on Wednesday confirmed their long-term agreement with ICE and said it was vital to Avelo’s financial stability. They also shared a statement from CEO Andrew Levy (right) acknowledging that it is a “sensitive and complicated topic”, but saying that the decision on the contract came “after significant deliberations”. 

The statement added that the deal would keep the airline’s “more than 1,100 crewmembers employed for years to come”. 

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represent Avelo’s crew, have urged the company to reconsider their decision, which they said would be “bad for the airline”. 

“Having an entire flight of people handcuffed and shackled would hinder any evacuation and risk injury or death,” the union reiterated. “We cannot do our jobs in these conditions”. 

Customers have also expressed outrage. Anne Watkins, a New Haven, Connecticut, resident, said she has stopped flying with Avelo. She and her co-members at the New Haven Immigrants Coalition have launched an online petition urging travellers to boycott the airline until they end their ICE flight operations. The petition has garnered more than 38,000 signatures. 

Watkins said the coalition also organised a vigil on Monday to mark the launch of Avelo’s deportation flights. 

In California, Los Angeles resident Nancy K has co-founded a campaign called “Mothers Against Avelo”. She plans to lead weekly protests every Sunday in May at Hollywood Burbank airport, one of Avelo’s six operating bases. 

And Connecticut Attorney-general William Tong, a Democrat, has threatened to review the state’s incentives for Avelo, which have received more than $2 million in subsidies and tax breaks.

Fun fact about Kiev, the capital of Ukraine:

A Smartphone App for Football Matches

Japan’s coronavirus-hit J-League is anticipated to resume either June 27 or July 04 behind closed doors. 

And a remote cheering app could mean football action won’t unfold in atmosphere-sapping silence. 

The Remote Cheerer system developed by Japanese firm Yamaha allows fans following the match on TV, the radio or online to encourage – or berate – players via their smartphones, their voices reverberating around the stadium in realtime via loudspeakers. 

In one field test, users in multiple remote locations chose from a range of on-screen options that sent their applause, chants, cheers and boos into the 50,000-seat Shizuoka Stadium ECOPA in Fukuroi City, Shizuoka Prefecture via 58 speakers set up among the empty seats. 

That’s a lot better than Germany’s cardboard cut-outs (my blog post dated May 16) and/or South Korea’s sex dolls (my blog post dated May 21)! 

Now, if only UK’s EPL will procure this app – that’ll be really cool! 

The Americas, said WHO, have emerged as the center of the coronavirus pandemic.

Indeed, cases have spiked, registering more than 2.4 million cases and more than 143,000 deaths. 

Countries like Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Peru have been singled out for special mention. 

Already yesterday, Carissa Etienne (right), WHO director for the Americas and head of the Pan American Health Organization had issued a warning: “Now is not the time for countries to ease restrictions”.

I don't think the twin terrors Donald Trump and Jai Bolsonaro will give a damn to the advice!

FYI, the Top 7 countries in the Americas combined account for 44.6% of coronavirus cases worldwide:

Children in Detention

Children sleep in cramped conditions in a holding cell at a US Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Brownsville, Texas, USA. File: Eric Gay/AP Photo

Protesters hold signs outside of the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children while members of US Congress tour the facility. File: Lynne Sladky/AP Photo

Since the earliest times, humanity has been on the move. 

For whatever reason, be it for economic motives or to flee from conflict and persecution. And these days, people, also move in response to the adverse effects of climate change, or other environmental factors. 

According to the United Nations, more people today than ever live in a country other than the one in which they were born. In 2019, the number of migrants globally reached an estimated 272 million, 51 million more than in 2010. 

Lest we forget, not all migrants are welcomed with open arms. 

On Monday, a UN study revealed that worldwide, more than seven million people under age 18 are held in jails and police custody – including 330,000 in immigration detention centers spread out in 80 countries. 

Lead author of the United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty, Manfred Nowak (left), pointed the finger at the US of A as having the world's highest rate of children in detention, often in violation of international law! 

It’s true! The sole superpower, supposedly the bastion of freedom and democracy accounts for nearly a third of such detentions! 

"The total number currently detained is 103,000", Nowak told AFP, calling it a "conservative" assessment, based on the latest available official data as well as "very reliable" additional sources. 

The migration is mostly from Central America – and it is not a new phenomenon, by the way. The Northern Triangle of Central America (“NTCA”), composed of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, is considered one of the most dangerous places on earth – and this results in unprecedented levels of migration. 

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has labelled this a humanitarian crisis. Many Central Americans are refugees who are fleeing for their lives. 

What is most shocking is the number of unaccompanied children who are seeking refuge outside their country. According to the Federation for American Scientists in 2014 alone, US authorities documented 68,500 unaccompanied children from the NTCA at the US-Mexico border. 

Interviewed children predominantly cited the following reasons for fleeing the region: Fleeing violence in their community and/or home; actively avoiding recruitment into gangs; and avoiding exploitation in the form of prostitution or human trafficking. 

Since coming to office, US President Donald Trump (right) has made strict immigration policies a cornerstone of his presidency. Under his "zero-tolerance" policy at the border, his government implemented a practice of separating families. 

Following public outrage, Trump formally ended the practice in June 2018, but immigration advocates say family separation continues. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform reported in July 2019 that over 700 children have been separated from their parents after the policy's official end. And in that same month, it was reported that as many as five children per day were being separated, and by October, the total had reached 1,090. 

Nowak declared that separating children, as was done by the Trump administration, from their parents is absolutely prohibited by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

“I would call it inhuman treatment for both the parents and the children", he lashed out. Linguists would be keenly aware that the word he used was “inhuman”, not “inhumane”. 

Nowak added that Mexico, where many Central American migrants have been turned back at the US border, also has high numbers, with 18,000 children in immigration-related detention and 7,000 in prisons. 

The UN study drew attention to the violations of the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child, which mandates that child detentions be used "only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time". 

The US is the only UN member state that has NOT RATIFIED the convention which took effect in 1990. 

But Nowak said that did not absolve the Trump's administration of wrongdoing with respect to the detention of migrant children at the southern border with Mexico. 

The professor of international law at the University of Vienna, Austria had explained that even though the US has not endorsed the child rights convention, it is bound by the convention on civil and political rights, which forbids cruel and inhuman treatment. 

I agree. Child detentions should only occur in very exceptional cases. 

Shame on you, Donald Trump! Shame on you, America!

The Sad Case of Two Drowned Migrants

A Canadian’s political cartoon wasn’t deemed appropriate to feature in Saint John-based Brunswick News Inc. and besides rejection, it reportedly cost Michael de Adder (left) his job after the internet got hold of it. 

The artwork has been described by actor Mark Hamill as “Pulitzer Prize-worthy”.

As you can see, de Adder turned the heartbreaking photo of a father and daughter who died trying to cross the Rio Grande into a cartoon slamming Trump for his perceived indifference to the plight of the migrants at the Mexico-United States border. 

[Background info: On June 24, 2019, the drowned bodies of Salvadoran refugee 25-year-old Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria were found locked in a final embrace on the banks of the Rio Grande river near Matamoros, a city in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas and located on the southern bank of the Rio Grande, directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas, in the United States.

The shocking photograph of their corpses broadcasted around the world, illustrates the plight of migrants and refugees who are making increasingly perilous attempts to reach the United States.

The family had trekked from El Salvador, where decades of civil war and gang violence has transformed the Central American country into one of the most dangerous in the world. Thousands of Salvadorans have joined migrant caravans headed towards the US border in search of refuge – but the images of them walking en masse towards America have been portrayed by Donald Trump as an “invasion”]. 

Wes Tyrell, president of the Association of Canadian Cartoonists, suggested in a Facebook post that it has more to do with the JD Irving-owned Brunswick News Inc. than it is about a controversial cartoon. 

“The Irvings have considerable corporate interests in the United States, but why would they care about cartoons potentially offending the American president?” Tyrell wrote. “Trade has been an issue since Trump took office, trade that affects the Irvings directly, not to mention a host of other issues. And the President himself is an unknown quantity who punishes those who appear to oppose him”. 

Brunswick News Inc. did admit to terminating de Adder’s contract but denied the cartoon was the cause. 

The above case reminds me of what Zunar went through during the Najib Razak regime’s era.

Shithole Donald Trump

Donald Trump just loves to mock, taunt and ridicule. 

In a January 11, 2018 meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House – discussing whether they should accept more immigrants from some countries – the US President had referred to Haiti, El Salvador and Africa as "shithole countries". 

The invective was reported by The Washington Post and the world recoiled in consternation and horror at Trump’s reckless and undignified insult. 

The country’s diplomats around the world were summoned for formal reproach and the 55-nation African Union labelled Trump’s vilification as being “clearly racist”. 

But an independent marketing site that promotes tourism in Africa is using the above and turning it into a slick communication campaign. 

A Zambia tourism Facebook page featured an advert which read: “Visit s****hole Zambia. Where the only stars and stripes you’ll have to see are in the sky and on a zebra!” 

“Where beautiful vistas and breathtaking wildlife are our trump card! 

*DISCLAIMER: This post does not represent the opinions of the official Zambia Tourism Agency, but that of an independent marketing site zambiatourism.com”. 

[NOTE: The said post is not claiming to represent the opinions of the official Zambia Tourism Agency. And it has received thousands of likes and shares]. 

The Gondwana Collection, a private tourism operator in Namibia, too, got into the act and released a video on Facebook lampooning the alleged Trump derogation.

Their managing director, Gys Joubert, told the Associated Press: “You can fight the negative with the negative, or you can give some pushback with the tongue-in-cheek approach”.

But the biggest shithole is really Donald Trump!

On Thursday afternoon, I attended a Service Source Toastmasters meeting. I was there as the General Evaluator.

This was my maiden visit to this club and I am glad I went.

'Twas a really good meeting. Thank you, Charan Sidhu for the invite!